Ismita's Clients

Mir Arif is a Bangladeshi author living in Ohio. His recent fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Fatal Flaw Literary Magazine, The Bangalore Review, Arts & Letters, Himal Southasian, and elsewhere. One of his short stories was longlisted for the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He obtained his MFA in fiction from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV), held the position of nonfiction editor at Witness Magazine, and worked as a copyeditor for The Believer.

He teaches English Composition at Columbus State Community College and is currently at work on both his debut story collection, Adrift, and a novel, The Second Interpretation.

Karen Myna Cantor is a Young Adult fiction writer based on the East Coast. Now a mapmaker, she spent several years working as an environmental scientist in a Florida town notorious for Florida Man stories.
Her current manuscript is a contemporary YA novel about two queer teenagers in rural South Florida who decide to put their town on the map in the worst way possible—by staging a (fake) disaster.

Born in Detroit to Arab immigrants, Hayan Charara is a poet, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. His latest poetry collection, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, was recently published by Milkweed Editions. His children’s book, The Three Lucys (Lee and Low 2019), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak, an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Hayan lives in Texas, where he teaches at The Honors College at the University of Houston.

His newest work, Hush, Little Children, is a novel about a couple trying to get pregnant just as a child suicide epidemic breaks out and a fringe group led by a charismatic leader uses disinformation and fear to advance ideologies rooted in hatred.

Dhaval Desai was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and completed his undergraduate studies at Emory University. He completed medical school at the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten, performed his clinical years of medical school in New York City, and had the opportunity to rotate through various community hospitals. He is board certified in both internal medicine and pediatrics and is currently Director of Hospital Medicine at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital. He is also a pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. 

Over the past several years, he has developed a passion for the patient and human experience in medicine through sharing perspectives, knowledge, and stories. His current project is a personal narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic and his experience of it as a doctor, leader, and father. 

Photo Credit: Sara Hanna Photography

Carly Diaz is an author of YA thriller and horror. Born in Miami, FL, she graduated from Emory University in 2021 with highest honors and now lives in New York City. In her free time, you can find her wandering through Central Park or practicing the guitar.

Carly is currently working on a YA thriller about the mysterious death of a young actress in Hollywood and the lengths her best friend will go to find the killer.

Chris Fleming is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities at Western Sydney University, where he is also a member of the Writing and Society Research Center. He is the author or editor of ten books and has written widely on literature, philosophy, and culture. His fiction and nonfiction work has appeared in both scholarly and popular media, including The Guardian, The Sydney Review of Books, Kill Your Darlings, The LA Review of Books, Parallax, The Saturday Paper, and The Chronicle Review. 

His most recent project, On Drugs (Giramondo 2019), is an equally humorous and contemplative memoir that discusses addiction, obsession, the intellect, and masculinity. 

Jessica Greaves is a YA fiction writer from the South Coast of Australia. After spending five years working as a materials engineer, she transitioned into manufacturing operations, where she is passionate about promoting girls in STEM and fostering an inclusive industry future. She spends her free time reading, learning languages, and obsessing about medieval and early modern history.
 
Her current manuscript is a YA historical fantasy set in the magical underworld of 1920s Venice. It is inspired by her love of history and travel.

Originally from The Bay Area, Jessica lives in Davis, California with her husband and 3 young daughters. Jessica has a background teaching Special Education but left the field to pursue
a career in writing. She’s written articles for ScaryMommy, Filter Free Parents, Mom.com, Sonoma Family Life Magazine and others. She graduated from UC Davis with a BA in creative writing and psychology.

Her debut novel is a work of upmarket bookclub fiction titled BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, in which an alcoholic mother's obsession with her mother-in-law’s perfectionism forces her to acknowledge the villain in the mirror. It was acquired in a two-book deal by Harper Muse and will be published in Summer 2025. With over a decade of sobriety, Jessica is a fierce advocate for addiction recovery. 

Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Justin Haynes is a novelist and short story writer. He has been awarded various fiction residencies and fellowships including the Tin House summer workshop and the Nicholas Jenkins Barnett fiction fellowship from Emory University. His writing has been publishing in a variety of literary magazines and journals, including Caribbean Quarterly, the Hawai’i Review, and Pree. Justin currently lives and works in Atlanta. His debut novel, IBIS, will be published in Fall 2024 by Abrams/Overlook Press. 

Matt Hogan was born and raised in Philadelphia and completed his undergraduate degree at Penn State University. He completed medical school at Temple University and then slogged through internal medicine residency at Emory University before finding the time to pursue his other interests including eating, sleeping, and writing. He is a board-certified internist and is currently the Director of Hospital Medicine at Emory Decatur Hospital and Emory Long Term Acute Care Hospital. At an early age, Matt fell in love with both science and comedy, and he employed those passions to pursue his career and influence his writing. Matt currently lives in Decatur, Georgia with his wife and two children.

His current project is a collection of personal essays that reflect on the absurdities of life and medicine through a humorous and self-deprecating lens.

Blair Hanson is a contemporary young adult fiction writer from New Jersey. After recently finishing a graduate program in environmental science, he now works as a quality assurance professional and chemist for a water quality lab. In his free time, Blair enjoys falling down Wikipedia wormholes and cuddling with the world's most adorable (and neediest) cats.

His debut YA features a reformed reality TV villain who embarks on a high-profile road trip across the Midwest to win back his ex-boyfriend and repair his tattered reputation. As the trip progresses, however, he realizes he doesn't actually want either of those things. AMERICA'S NOT-SO SWEETHEART will be published Spring 2025 by Page Street.

Art Credit: Rachal Duggan

Gregory D. Johnsen has been a Fulbright Fellow in Yemen, a Fulbright-Hays Fellow in Egypt, and a Peace Corps volunteer in Jordan. He served two years on the Yemen Panel of Experts at the UN Security Council and was BuzzFeed’s inaugural Michael Hastings National Security Reporting Fellow, where he won a Dirksen Award from the National Press Foundation and, in collaboration with Radiolab, a Peabody Award. Johnsen has a PhD from Princeton and is currently the associate director of the Institute for Future Conflict at the United States Air Force Academy. His writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including the New York Times and the Atlantic. 

His current novel, The Fatherless, is a haunting triptych about the value of a single life that asks if the present can ever truly redeem the past. 

After decades working as a meeting planner, a corporate video producer, a freelance script writer for local television commercials, and teaching high school English, Amy Parsons finally committed to her passion of writing. From the time she started reading and making up stories, she has felt called to tell tales. She and her husband live in a small town in Minnesota, where Amy teaches English to high schoolers and runs the school's yearbook club. 

Amy's debut novel is a YA story about a school shooting, a topic she wishes didn't exist in reality.

  Kentee is the creative force of nature behind @dexterdogouray, the bipedal, tri-pawed wonder dog taking the world and the internet by storm. As Dexter’s puppy parent she is his social media manager, pet influencer, pooper scooper, video producer, and inspirational writer.  Dexter Dog Ouray has won the 2021 Ollie Heartfelt Hero Award, the 2022 Durango Cowboy Gathering Best Family Award, and an Emmy Channel 9 News in Denver over an inspirational interview of Kentee and Dexter. 

She and Dexter have since reached millions of people worldwide, uplifting spirits and encouraging folks to get through the pandemic, one Dexter-step at a time.

Frank Riccardi is a cybersecurity and privacy expert passionate about empowering people and companies with the cyber-savvy needed to repel cyberattacks.  With 25 years of experience in healthcare compliance and privacy, he has led the response to high-profile data breaches and cybersecurity investigations and developed robust compliance and privacy programs for large healthcare systems. Frank is the author of Mobilizing the C-suite: Waging War Against Cyberattacks (Business Expert Press), a call to arms for business leaders to take action against cyberattacks.

He is currently working on a pop tech book meant for general audiences that covers the scams and technologies that cybercriminals employ to steal your data and ruin your life, and how to defend yourself from it.

Lauren Seal is a writer, librarian, and the third Poet Laureate of St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. Her work has appeared in various literary magazines and anthologies, and she's performed at numerous festivals and events. She mentors the teen and young adult poets of SWYC - the Spoken Word Youth Choir - and performs in the adult incarnation of the group. In her free time, Lauren can be found reading, writing, and composing poems in her head on long walks.

Lauren's debut novel, a YA novel-in-verse titled LIGHT ENOUGH TO FLOAT, will be published by Rocky Pond Books/Penguin Teen in Fall 2024.